About Chris Smith

Chris Smith, a citizen activist focused on transportation, neighborhoods and civic engagement, is the founder of PortlandTransport.com. He currently serves on the Portland Planning and Sustainability Commission and the board of Portland Streetcar Inc. His day job is as Site Architect for Xerox.com.

5 Responses to Should You Be Allowed to Auction the Parking Space You’re Leaving?

How would that work? Suppose I am leaving a parking space, and X agrees to “buy” it from me–do I refuse to vacate the spot until X is ready to pull in behind me? What if Y comes along, wants the spot, and in turn refuses to let me leave–or else tries to prevent X from taking the space? Or gets there first, and refuses to move when I tell him I’ve sold it to X and won’t be leaving until X arrives?

I’ve noticed signs at PDX informing travellers that it is illegal to “resell” luggage carts (which cost $4 a pop to rent last time I was at PDX) to other travellers. You can give them away, or return them to the dispenser for a quarter reward, but signage claims that it is illegal to charge other airport users to take a cart in your possession and thus deprive SmartCarte (or whoever) of revenue.

This is a perfect example of the free market profiting from the underpricing of a valuable resource. What if the BLM allowed mining and harvesting on its lands without charging anything? I think people would be lining up to exploit it.

Um, the BLM vastly underprices mining, oil drilling, and harvesting on its lands.

And people ARE lining up to exploit it.

As a result, people treat mining/drilling/harvesting leases as if they are real property rights and resell/sublease them repeatedly. For profit. Then they lobby Congress to extend their below-market-rate leases, so that they can keep subleasing them for profit.

Yeah, I’ve been involved in this stuff a bit.

Anyway, the general point is totally correct: underpricing a limited public resource leads to all sorts of abuses. I bet you didn’t know that the BLM actually WAS an example of this.